SOPA is the acronym for the "Stop Online Piracy Act," a bill that was introduced to the House of Representatives in October and would would give U.S. law enforcement and copyright holders greater power to fight online trafficking in copyrighted intellectual property and counterfeit goods and

PIPA ("Protect Intellectual Property Act") is the Senate's version of SOPA and is about enhancing enforcement against "rogue websites operated and registered overseas" and defines infringement as the distribution of illegal copies, counterfeit goods or anti-digital rights management technology.

Your Website Could Unfairly Get Shut Down/Blacklisted: If the government or the owner of copyrighted material identifies your website as hosting copyrighted material and falling guilty of copyright infringement, penalties could include disabling online advertising networks and payment facilitators (e.g. PayPal) from doing business with your website, preventing search engines from linking to your website (bye-bye, SEO!), and enforcing that internet service providers block access to your website.

If SOPA gets passed, it would override such safeguards, enabling judges to immediately shut down websites found guilty. Websites will only be able to defend themselves after their site had been taken down, when the damage will have already been done.

The bill also holds for some very steep ramifications for websites that stream copyrighted content without authorization: up to 5 years in prison!

Sites like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn and the like whose sites are posted with countless links from users daily would literally be unable to function, as the amount of copyright infringing content that gets posted would be completely beyond their control.

Many of these websites are publicly opposing the bill and have even threatened to initiate an "Internet Blackout," during which several of the biggest sites on the internet -- including Google, Facebook, PayPal, Wikipedia, Twitter, and Amazon -- will shut down to emphasize the damaging effects SOPA could have on the internet.

Journalist Darren Garnick and his 9-year old son Ari did some very cool "newsjacking" recently.

Darren wanted to find a fun way to teach Ari about politics. Given Ari's fascination with superheroes, they hit the campaign trail asking every GOP candidate the question, "If you could be any superhero, who would you be, and why?"

Most of the candidates chose Superman, which is about as safe as it gets, and missed an opportunity for differentiation.

Media training is all about ATM. Answer quickly/directly and Transition to your Message regardless of what the question is. Rick Santorum builds his campaign on family values. Without skipping a beat, he chose the Incredibles because the Dad. On the other hand, the charmless Ron Paul said "I don't know" and impatiently turned away.

Although the GOP primary is absolutely saturating the airwaves, Ari and Darren had a fun angle on this topic, quickly rising above the noise.

The PR lesson for candidates and businesses here is that the individual voter/consumer has potentially the same media impact as the TV networks.

Your Marketing Approach isn't Local - Whether your business has one location or five -- or 500 -- you can't fail to understand that despite being able to hold the entire world in the palms of their hands, mobile consumers are by and large concerned with the here—right here—and the now—right now.

You Mobile efforts are not social - For mobile consumers, it’s not just what they’re doing that’s important, but where, with whom, and when.

You don't give customers what they want - By taking the time to understand how your customers operate in mobile mode—whether that’s by thinking it through from their perspective or, better yet, conducting research and surveys—you ensure your mobile strategy is properly focused.

You're looking at the wrong metrics - In a mobile environment, you have to track not only how many visitors come to the mobile site, but also how many leave it and go to your desktop site, indicating something is lacking in the mobile version.

Your Team Doesn't "get it" - if your staff isn't properly trained and well-versed, they are unable to explain the benefits of your mobile channel to customers and will consequently prevent you from maximizing your investment in mobile marketing.

Your Website is not mobile optimized - Pages load slowly, once-familiar buttons are now off-page and out of sight, and copy needed to intelligently and coherently comprehend the message are off-screen.

You're App-solutely Wrong - Mobile apps are all the rage. There are a more than 1 million apps now, which (in 2011) were downloaded about 18 billion times. Still, marketers must ask themselves, “Do we need an app?” and if so, “Which type of app is best for us?”

Marketing Takeaway: Desktop marketing and mobile marketing serve similar purposes but each require a different approach based on how your customers will use them.